Staffline Issues, Audit Purpose and News on Patisserie

Yesterday Staffline Group (STAF) issued a statement first thing in the morning saying that the publication of results scheduled for that day would be delayed. The shares promptly dropped by about a third. Later in the day it stated that “the company can confirm that this morning concerns were brought to the attention of the board relating to invoicing and payroll practices within the Recruitment Division”. A full investigation was promised and the shares were then suspended. Is this yet another accounting scandal in an AIM company one wonders? Generally after such announcements, only bad news comes out.

Staffline is a recruitment/staffing and training business. It’s one of the largest AIM companies with revenue of nearly a billion pounds and reported profits of £71 million last year. It has been growing rapidly in recent years.

I have never held the stock although I did see a presentation by the company a couple of years ago. In general I don’t like employment businesses as they tend to follow economic cycles and the sector has few barriers to entry. I also considered the company to be at risk from regulatory and tax problems. The company also has considerable debt which is odd for this kind of business which generally have a “capital light” structure. Investors might have been concerned by the announcement on the 8th January that net debt had risen to £63 million at the 2018 year-end.

Investors will have to keep their fingers crossed for further news.

I covered in some previous blog posts the issue that audit quality is generally poor and that false accounts and outright fraud are regularly missed by audits – and it’s not just one or two firms – the whole audit industry seems to be incompetent in that regard. The Commons BEIS Committee held a meeting yesterday and one of the witnesses was David Dunckley, head of Grant Thornton, who audited the accounts of Patisserie (CAKE). He admitted that auditors did not look for fraud when auditing accounts and that there was an “expectation gap”. Committee members were not impressed.

Meanwhile Investor’s Champion revealed that Luke Johnson and Paul May, directors of Patisserie, owned a property that was leased back to a subsidiary of the company. As a related party transaction this should have been disclosed in the Patisserie accounts but was not.

The FT also disclosed that at least 30 shareholders had signed up to support a legal case with law firm Teacher Stern. But other investors are talking to other solicitors. In such cases it can be many months before the basis of a claim is clear and solicitors tend to jostle for the business of pursuing a claim in the meantime – one might call some of them “ambulance chasers”. Investors are advised not to spend money on such actions until the basis of a claim, and the ability to both finance an action and identify asset rich defendants is clear.